To feel like I've never fully grown up?

[Tulip2478]

Posted here a couple of times before but I'm a long time reader of the helpful advice on here. Feeling really down the last few weeks and feel like it's because I never fully grew up. I'm 33 with three children and yet I feel stupid, immature and I second-guess my decisions constantly. I just don't feel like I know enough for someone my age.
As a backstory, my childhood wasn't the best but by no means the worst. My dad was emotionally and sometimes physically abusive, my mum struggled a lot because of it. My parents didn't really show me how to do things I.e ride a bike, swim, weren't interested in my education or career. They just didn't seem interested in my life during and after school so never helped me make good decisions regarding opportunities, or taught me anything about adult life.

I'm not trying to solely blame them but I don't think my childhood helped. Even though I'm older now I still feel useless and like a child. I think even my husband sees me like this in the nicest possible way. We met at work, he was 41 I was 24 and he was in a very senior position- he was so amazing in every way and I was and i still am in awe of him. He kind of took all the responsibilities of the house upon himself, i have a feeling he thinks i cant be trusted to make good decisions. We don't have a joint account, I don't have access to any of his money or cards, and I went back to work after babies because I had to ask for money and I hated it. He has always made the major decisions in our family I.e. extension on house, decorating, moving house. I have no idea of the monthly outgoings or how to ideally run a house. I'm also not on the mortgage. I get the feeling it's because he sees how immature I am. He loves me dearly though and I know that. But I feel so inadequate and like I never fully grew up and its embarrassing. I guess I'm just wanting to see if other people have ever felt the same way and if there is any helpful advice.

Oh hush, you’ll give yourself a headache.

@DrNow my husband does not abuse my children. You have no idea of my family life. I grew up in an abusive household so I also know how it feels. My husband is a fantastic father and my children adore him, they frequently say how much they live him and ask where their daddy is when he is at work. I'm not bitter towards my children either, they are the love of my life. I'm sorry about your upbringing but respectfully, I think you're projecting onto this thread because of your childhood. I very much doubt you grew up in a situation similar to my children because if you did it would have been a very happy childhood for you.

@Tulip2478 A man who rapes and financially abuses their mother isn’t a fantastic father to his children.

Surely you can see that they have an increased chance of being sexually abused in their own home because of him? Your children are living with a rapist.

I get that you’ve had a tough upbringing and it can be so, so hard to break those patterns, but they’ll likely perpetuate through your children.

And I genuinely thought I had a happy childhood. It was great until I was old enough to see, and hear, what was going on.

Wtf

Funny how victim blamers give people headaches. Really quite astounding.

@Tulip2478 A husband who rapes the mother of his children is not a fantastic father. By virtue of who he is – there is no behaviour or quality that can redeem that monstrosity.

On your last thread you wanted to leave him. Perhaps you should read your own words back to yourself. What can we do here to help you? Mumsnet has been able to assist people in the past – allow us to help you.

OP your husband sounds appalling.

Why are you paying half the mortgage on a part time low wage? Would it be to make sure you have access to very little money so you can’t leave?

Why aren’t you named on the mortgage if you pay it? Is it so that you get nothing if you try and leave? If your husband’s wage is good enough for the mortgage alone, adding you would not affect you being able to get the mortgage. That was a lie to keep you off it.

Why would you have to pay child care with your part time low wage? Is this to either make sure you have no net income after paying it or to trap you in the home?

How long to you plan staying in the same bedroom as your children? As many years as possible so your husband doesn’t rape you in your sleep?

Why do you have no access to household income? Is it to stop you from being able to leave?

This is not a man who is going to have a happy chat with you about household finances. He won’t suddenly reveal all, set up a joint account, pay his wages in, and tell you about his savings. He doesn’t want you to be able to leave and claim anything.

Please follow advice on here and speak to women’s aid first before alerting him to the fact that you’ve had enough of this financial coercion.

What is stopping you from seeing him for who he is? I promise you, you will be able to manage as a single parent. You’ve made a good start with getting a job. Don’t give it up. If you escape this man you will start to feel grown up in a matter of hours.

💐

@Tulip2478 And I fully believe you have posted again here, and let slip all the details you have, because you are subconsciously crying for help. You want people to see and hear you but you are battling with the loyalty you still feel to your husband.

I literally just got a call to say my 55 year old colleague had died in his sleep. Apparently perfectly healthy, swam every day. It happens.

In fact I can think of a string of male colleagues in their 50s who have died or suffered a debilitating illness or accident over the last few years. Not heart attacks or strokes -- accident that caused a serious brain injury, a brain tumour, another, advanced Parkinson's.

Just to clarify a few things, I posted previously well over a year ago about worries of my husband doing things to me in my sleep. I received lots of good advice bit was heavily pregnant at the time. I actually thought my thread had been deleted because I cannot find it anywhere in my account, so can't look back at it, unless I'm just being stupid again! My H hasn't done anything while iv been asleep since my baby has been born and he is now over one. In fact in the few months after his birth I felt really happy. It's only the past few weeks I have been feeling more down and realising I don't have a clue on how to act like on adult. I didn't mean to mislead people or withhold info I genuinely thought my thread was no longer on mumsnet and thought that this was a separate issue.

Kindly OP, he hasn’t done anything to you in your sleep for a year because you moved into another bedroom.

A year of not being raped in your sleep by your husband is not something generally celebrated in a relationship. You must be able to see that is far from normal.

I can't see my old thread. It's not listed in my account so I thought it had been deleted by mumsnet. But yes you are right in a way I am conflicted. Its just my H despite some faults is so wonderful. He has so many good qualities and I do think he genuinely loves me and wants the best for me. And everybody loves him everybody sings his praises. My mum and his mum always tell me how lucky I am. I will approach the issue regarding finances later when he is home and follow the good advice I have been given.

Google your username – your old thread will appear in a search. Please read back your own words – they matter a great deal.

People here haven’t jumped to your other thread at random. They have looked at it because this one still contains all the hallmarks of abuse. It is not a separate issue. It is the same abusive man continuing to cause you harm.

Please stop calling yourself stupid. You are not stupid, you are in a position of severe vulnerability at someone else’s fault.

@Catoo or you perhaps think he has realised how uncomfortable it made me feel? A part of me thinks he didn't actually realise that it wasn't a good thing to do and i think a few people would say the same. I think he would be horrified by how it can be seen by other people.

OP, with respect and genuine concern, the person who abused me when I was nine was also universally liked. His mother, and my own mother would have told you he was a wonderful, generous, upstanding human being.

I'm assuming your mother and MIL don't know that your husband rapes you in your sleep. Do they know you're not on the mortgage, and that he kept you short of money?

Please do not let your husband know you are questioning finances. He will tighten his grip on you.

Loving your husband and thinking he has redeeming qualities are completely normal feelings in an abusive relationship. They are highly complex situations and you’re not alone.

Please call a domestic abuse centre for advice. Can you PM me your location and I will look one up for you.

An average human being, even a not particularly good one would recognise that raping your sleeping wife is not a good thing.

Just sit and think for a minute, OP.

What would you do if your DH dropped dead tomorrow? What would you do if he ran off with his secretary? What do you think you would need to know in those circumstances - your electricity provider? Where his pensions are? Just think about all those daily things that are paid for from accounts you know nothing about, to payees you know nothing about.

You NEED to know these things because if you don't you are not only vulnerable to abuse but if ANYTHING were to happen to your DH, you'd be really in the shit. Maybe you can put it to him like that? For the good of the family, of the children, of keeping a roof over your heads you need to know about the money.

Thank you for everybody's kind replies here. I really do appreciate it I have a lot to find out. I will start with asking about the deeds as a few posters mentioned and see where I go from there. You are all right that I need to know about the outgoings incase something happens. I suppose his reaction amd what he says will let me know whether he is trying to be financially controlling.

OK, but do YOU love HIM? It's weird how you don't include that in your list.

HIS mum tells you you're "lucky"? How very creepy. But certainly goes some way towards showing how he got the way he is.

I grew up in an abusive household so I also know how it feels.

No, you know how that abusive household felt. This one isn't the same so you think it's not abusive, but it absolutely is.

This is how both abusers and abuse victims recreate/re-seek abusive scenarios after abusive backgrounds. Something about it isn't the same as before - it might even be very different, for various reasons - so the abuser reckons they aren't abusive ("I don't do x") and the abusee has the same reasoning.

And of course you don't want to hear it, because you've invested so much in this man, you don't know how to be without him (a feeling he has cultivated and clearly sought you out for) and clinging to him and acting in his interests is your survival technique. You probably do love each other in the ways you know how; that's the "relationship" part of "abusive relationship".

But it's still abusive.

Yes, I've had to have this conversation with my Dad, who handles everything to do with his and my mother's finances and bills, and, since he retired, has moved literally everything from banking to life insurance to bill paying online, when my mother wouldn't even know how to turn on a computer. I had to be quite blunt and say 'You need to tell one of us where things are, your electricity providers, your insurance etc, where you bank etc'. He's older, and the chances are that she'll outlive him, and unless one of us has found out where things are, she will be penniless and unable to pay bills. My father struggles with theory of mind. He kept saying 'But the bank account of with X.' And I had to keep saying 'YOU know that. I don't know that. Mum doesn't know that.'

I'm older and have seen far too many partners (almost always husbands) die unexpectedly leaving OHs who have spent their lives never putting petrol in their own cars or checking tyre pressures or paying the electricity bill having complete breakdowns because they don't know what to do.

These are the last things you want to have to think of in the event of divorce or death when your world is already upside down.

I'm not trolling please dont think that. I mean he doesn't see it as rape that's the point. If he knew it could be classed as rape I think he wouldn't have done it. I know he never saw it like judging by the comments he made, joking about not needing consent etc. As an aside point, my own mother didn't even know marital rape was illegal and she's only 60 so its an attitude many people still have.